☆ 012 ; refocus

After taking the weekend to think about what Patrick had to say about my previous proposal for output [the words lame and one-sided were used ;)] I think I've come up with something far better. It's really complex, though, and I'm not sure if I'm taking it too far or not far enough, and I'm stuck on how to organize the final product. Matrices are key to this project, as you will see, but I'm not sure if the matrices should be the end product, or some other sort of graphic. The matrix makes it easier, I think, but it also seems more rough around the edges. I suppose it'll come to me later on.



I'm now moving from a comparison of Le Corbusier and Loewenstein to Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Wright, Gropius, and Loewenstein. In this way I'll get a broader scope of Modernism and be able to better define what's going on. What I think I want to do is choose a building, space, place, and artifact from each architect, then create a series of tables and matrices that contain information based on different word and concept groupings. Like the honors project I'll be working with a phrase [lingua franca] to guide my analysis. I already chose what buildings, spaces, places, and artifacts I want to use and they are, listed in that order by architect:

LE CORBUSIER Villa Savoye, interior of Notre Dame du Haut, Chandigarh, LC-1 chair
MIES VAN DER ROHE Barcelona Pavilion, interior of Farnsworth House, Seagram Building, Barcelona chair
WRIGHT Robie House, hearth, Taliesin West, side chair
GROPIUS Bauhaus, interior of Gropius House, University of Baghdad, door handles
LOEWENSTEIN Loewenstein House, Greensboro Public Library stairs, Spangler House, built-ins

I will also layer in the aspect portion of the honors project [nature, people, symbol, and material]. The resulting output would be in the form of four matrices, which are as follows and listed in descending order of more general concepts to more specific concepts:

GROUP Comparing an set of objects [ie: Villa Savoye with the interior of Notre Dame du Haut, Chandigarh, LC-1 chair]; this matrix describes the architectural language as defined by a specific person
CYCLE Comparing similar objects with each other [ie: Villa Savoye with Barcelona Pavilion, Robie House, Bauhaus, Loewenstein House]; this matrix describes the design cycle
OBJECT Comparing similar objects to an aspect [ie: buildings to nature]; this matrix describes the design lexicon of Modernism
ASPECT Comparing a set of objects to a set of aspects [ie: Le Corbusier's objects to all aspects]; this matrix describes the context of the design language

I hope that's not too muddled, I'm still trying to make complete sense of it in my head. Factoring in time, as well, to successfully complete this objective would take many levels of analysis, which is why I'm thinking the graphics are going to be complicated. That's a lot of stuff, man. There's got to be some way to map it.

I installed Flash on my computer but I've yet to have time to go through a tutorial, but I think that it would help me a lot as I can animate the output and all the information won't be BAM IN YOUR FACE when you first come upon it. But I also gather from the Gothic website that just some good web design sans Flash will do it for me.

It's my goal that by this time next week I'll have a draft of the ideas and comparisons down and posted here so I can start designing the output, because I think that's going to take the most time...